Pennsylvania’s aging levees are under pressure from scarce funding and severe weather
Pennsylvania has over 180 levees that span approximately 155 miles (255 kilometers) and keep its rivers from flooding. They protect about 158,000 people and US$26.2 billion in property across the state, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.However, those levees are aging, and funding to maintain and improve them is becoming scarcer.
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Seed Grant Projects
$1.5M NSF grant to support K-12 learning with real-world educational dataset
| psu.edu
The U.S. National Science Foundation has awarded a research team at Penn State $1.5 million over three years to develop an educational dataset containing real industrial data. The team aims to bring their dataset to math classrooms in Pennsylvania school districts and identify ways to foster productive learning while addressing unproductive confusion.
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Could plant scientists breed heavy metal contamination out of cacao?
| psu.edu
Varieties of cacao plants — which give rise to chocolate — differently mitigate and manage a toxic heavy metal that occurs naturally in the plants' soil. Researchers have now identified genetic differences in how two varieties manage metal uptake and facilitate the metal’s movement throughout the plant, which could help inform breeding practices.
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Ask an Expert: How could data centers impact public lands?
The construction of new data centers is shaping up to be a defining issue in the 2026 midterm elections. Politicians in both parties have been distancing themselves from data centers in the face of public discontent around the issue, with public backlash leading to the freezing of dozens of data center projects nationwide this year.
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Stuckeman School to showcase innovations in design research at Open House
| psu.edu
The Stuckeman School in the Penn State College of Arts and Architecture is hosting its annual Research Open House from noon to 1:30 p.m. on Oct. 1 in the Jury Space of the Stuckeman Family Building to highlight the diverse research that is ongoing by faculty and students within the school.
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Climate Consortium announces fall events
The Penn State Climate Consortium will host a series of fall events examining some of the most pressing challenges and opportunities associated with a changing climate.
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Mike Helbing
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Hannah Wiseman
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Anirudh Subramanyam
Assistant Professor, Harold and Inge Marcus Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering -
Asher Rosinger
Center for Energy Law and Policy's Michael Helbing and Hannah Wiseman release Solar Ordinance Database
The Penn State Center for Energy Law and Policy has published a user-friendly Pennsylvania solar ordinance database. The database includes filters for a variety of provisions in local government ordinances addressing grid-scale solar development. It is available to the public free of charge by clicking here. The database contains 4,900 ordinance provisions from 300 local governments across 57 counties.
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No relief in sight for Caribbean’s drought-hit farmers
| climatecentre.org
The Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology last week again warned the region faces increasingly dry conditions ahead of the official dry season beginning in November, media reports said.
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Hidden wavelengths in white light can change how warm a room feels
| thebrighterside.news
White light temperature perception shifted in a Penn State study using invisible red and blue wavelength differences.
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Seed Grant Projects
Can light fool the body into feeling warmer or cooler? A new study says yes
| studyfinds.com
Invisible shifts in white light changed how warm people felt, a Penn State study finds, with real energy-saving potential.
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Seed Grant Projects
Invisible changes to white light made rooms feel cooler and could cut AC energy use by up to 11.4%
| zmescience.com
A novel experiment suggests light spectra could subtly widen thermostat comfort zones.
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Seed Grant Projects
What will it take to integrate AI data centers into the power grid?
AI data centers present a grid challenge that goes beyond how much electricity they use. Their uncertain and sometimes rapidly changing power needs, combined with fast development timelines, create new risks for grid planning and reliability.
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